F-Rank Soul Eater-Chapter 149: Third Form: Vagabond’s Annoyance.

The crystal ant shrieked again.

It tore free from the gravity hold, as its jagged limbs stabbing into the arena floor to anchor itself. Its remaining eye glowed with a violent, unstable light as shards of crystal regenerated along its missing side in ugly uneven growths.

This Shade refused to die.

"Drive it down!" an instructor shouted.

And a barrage of attacks answered.

Compressed wind blades carved trenches across its thorax. Lightning spears struck in succession, each impact cracking more of its crystalline shell. A wave of freezing mist swept upward, frosting over its legs and slowing its movements.

Still—

It endured.

It lunged.

One mandible snapped around a barrier and crushed it like glass.

Then—

A calm voice cut through the chaos.

"Enough."

The purple-haired instructor stepped forward.

"Uhhh... Instructor Vandabel is finally acting."

"...of the Vandabel family. The only family that is said to have managed a full campaign in the Glass without a Soul Mecha?"

"YES... Thats the one. I heard his family believes that the use of soul Mechas is for weaklings,and therefore train to inhuman levels to achieve strengths only a mecha should have."

"Dammit. They are practically beasts in that family."

The whispers flew as Vandabel stepped forward.

Until now, he had been holding back—staff grounded, and his Soul energy contained.

But no more.

His long violet hair whipped around his shoulders as the unstable winds surged, but his expression remained composed.

Cold.

He lifted his staff.

The crystal at its tip pulsed once.

Then twice.

The air around him thickened.

"Third Form," he murmured. "Vagabond’s Annoyance.

The ground beneath his feet cracked in a perfect circle.

Behind him—

A massive silhouette unfolded.

Not fully visible.

Not entirely physical.

A towering Shade manifested in layered fragments of light and shadow—tall, robed, faceless, its presence bending the air around it. Rings of luminous script rotated slowly behind its head like a halo constructed of rotating equations.

The pressure changed instantly.

Even the remaining instructors felt it.

"Damn it. Is that not Shade actualization?"

"YES... it is. I heard only very gifted people of exceptional noble bloodline can achieve it."

"No, its only those of at least A rank and above."

"What! I jeard its only the royal family that can use Shade actualization."

Many cadets whispered and even instructors were no exception.

After all, this was a display of power many could only envy.

"Hey... what’s that oval thing on his staff that is shining like that?" Another student asked.

But the cadet by his side simply shrugged.

Meanwhile...

The ant reacted.

Its fractured body recoiled, crystal plates grinding against one another in alarm.

Too late.

The instructor Vandabel swung his staff downward in a single, clean arc.

The Shade behind him mirrored the motion.

And the sky split.

A vertical line of blinding violet light tore downward from above, wider than the ant’s entire body. It didn’t explode.

No.

It erased.

The beam struck the crystal ant directly.

For half a second, its body resisted—crystal layers fracturing outward in desperate defense.

Then the fractures spread everywhere at once.

Every crack on its body glowed.

The instructors didn’t hesitate.

"Now!" someone shouted.

Lightning converged. Wind blades drove inward.

Gravity intensified, forcing the ant to remain locked in place.

White flame engulfed its lower body, superheating the crystal from within.

Of course, all this was not needed. Instructor Vandabel’s attack had already given the deciding move.

But he was not done. He extended his free hand.

The towering Shade behind him did the same.

And closed its fist.

The beam intensified.

The crystal ant didn’t just shatter.

It dissolved.

Its jagged form collapsed inward, disintegrating into violet ash that scattered into the air like fading embers.

The shrieking stopped.

The pressure lifted.

Silence—brief but heavy—settled where the monstrous Shade had been.

The purple-haired instructor exhaled slowly.

The towering Shade behind him faded in fragments, dissolving into drifting motes of light before vanishing completely.

His Third Form receded.

Around him, the other instructors lowered their hands, souk energy dimming as they confirmed the kill.

Above the battlefield, only the rats remained.

And at the center—

Goldsworth’s dome continued to tremble under mounting pressure.

Fortunately, the battle above had shifted.

With the crystal ant erased from existence, the instructors redirected everything they had toward the remaining rats.

The multiplied Shades screeched in fury, their massive bodies tearing through the smoke-filled sky. One lunged at an instructor only to be met with a wall of compressed air that folded its charge sideways. Another was pinned briefly by a cascade of lightning that stitched across its scarred back.

But they were still dangerous.

Still fast.

Still targeting Soren whenever an opening appeared.

Instructor Eagle-Wing Eyebrows rose higher into the air.

His robes snapped sharply in the turbulent wind. His gaze followed the largest of the rats—the original body. The one with the long diagonal scar leaking that strange blue and green mixture.

"That one is the anchor!" he barked. "destroy it!"

Two instructors moved immediately.

One unleashed a barrage of crescent-shaped wind arcs that carved into the rat’s flank, forcing it to twist midair. Another slammed a gravity seal onto its shoulder, dragging it downward.

The rat roared and split again—

But the clones flickered.

Unstable.

Eagle-Wing Eyebrows inhaled slowly.

Then he spoke.

"Third Form." The air trembled. "Verdant Sky Reaper."

His soul energy flared—bright purple, sharp, cutting.

And then—

A sight many had never seen before. His eyebrows grew.

It was not subtly, and not gradually.

They extended outward from his face in a blur of motion, lengthening, thickening, until each arched strand stretched several meters to either side. They hardened, flattening into blade-like structures of condensed green soul energy.

Long. Wide. Whirring.

He tilted forward.

And began to spin.

At first slowly—

Then faster.

His body rotated midair, robes tightening against him as the massive green blades formed by his eyebrows became a violent propeller.

He was like the blades of an helicopter.

The air screamed around him.

A vortex formed.

Wind compressed beneath him.

Then—

He shot forward.

The rotating blades tore through the sky like a drilling cyclone of emerald light.

The main rat tried to retreat.

Too slow.

The spinning blades struck its torso.

For a fraction of a second, there was resistance—fur, flesh, corrupted energy pushing back.

Then the blades bit in.

Green met blue and red.

The drill effect intensified.

A spiraling column of shredded fur, blood, and corrupted fluid exploded outward as Eagle-Wing Eyebrows bored straight through the rat’s chest.

The long diagonal scar split open completely.

A tunnel of green-lit carnage carved cleanly through its massive body.

The rat’s shriek turned into a choking gurgle.

Eagle-Wing Eyebrows burst out the other side in a spray of green-tinted blood.

He stopped spinning midair.

Behind him—

The giant rat hung suspended for a moment.

A perfectly drilled hole ran through its core.

Then it collapsed.

Its body disintegrated rapidly, breaking apart into dissolving fragments of dark energy.

Below and around them—

The clones flickered violently.

Without the anchor—

They began to disappear.

One by one, the remaining rats dissolved into nothing, their forms scattering into the air like torn shadows caught in wind.

Silence followed.

The sky cleared.

Eagle-Wing Eyebrows’ elongated blades shrank back into normal proportions, settling once more above his sharp, stern eyes.

He exhaled once.

The rats were gone.

Only the trembling crimson dome at the center of the arena remained.

And the storm within it.

Below the fading remnants of the rat battle, the crimson dome continued to tremble.

The Red Swords held their formation, blades angled inward. Their chant had shifted from steady devotion to strained insistence.

Sweat dripped freely from their foreheads now, and breathing grew ragged.

The dome pulsed.

Lieutenant Rocky felt it first. It was a kind of wrongness.

Of course they was pressure.

But even more, there was consumption.

His grip tightened on his sword as a subtle chill spread through his arms. It wasn’t fatigue from output. It wasn’t recoil from backlash.

It felt as if something was drinking him.

He gritted his teeth.

Across the formation, one of his men faltered for half a second before correcting his stance.

Rocky’s frown deepened.

Goldsworth hovered at the center of the dome, crimson energy writhing around him in thick, liquid coils. It no longer thrashed violently against the barrier.

It pressed.

Slow.

Measured.

Hungry.

Rocky’s jaw clenched.

He remembered thatgiant rat...

When it touched Goldsworth’s corrupted soul energy. It had exploded into red fluid, Goldsworth’s Soul energy had surged, becoming deeper, and denser as it drank it.

Now—

The same draining sensation gnawed at him.

Whatever Goldsworth had become...

It was feeding.

On them.

On their output.

On the very mechanism meant to suppress it.

"This isn’t right..." Rocky muttered under his breath.

The purpose of the Neuralink Cross formation was absolute containment. To Seal the chaotic power. Isolate it. Starve it until it extinguished itself.

That should have come easy.

But this—

This was inversion.

He felt his strength thinning— siphoned. Drawn through invisible threads into the crimson storm.

Then—

Snap.

A sharp, brittle sound.

Rocky’s eyes dropped instantly.

At the base of his blade, where the silver cross was locked in place—

A crack had formed.

It was thin and Jagged.

Running across the red-etched runes.

His breath caught.

"No...thats not possible. "

If the cross fractured completely, the formation would destabilize. If the formation broke—

The dome would collapse.

And if the dome collapsed—

That thing in the center would be free inside the academy.

He lifted his head sharply, scanning his squad.

One of the younger Red Swords was visibly trembling.

Another’s seal flickered.

They were all being drained.

"This shouldn’t be happening," Rocky growled.

The crimson energy inside the dome pulsed again.

Stronger.

Then—

A voice drifted lazily across the chaos.

"You boys need some help."

She did not shout, but every person heard her.

Every head turned.

Perched casually on top a broken half-pillar near the edge of the arena sat Dr. Kaya.

One leg crossed over the other.

A lollipop rested between her lips.

Her white coat fluttered lightly in the residual wind of clashing soul pressure, utterly unaffected.

Her green eyes gleamed with interest as she watched the trembling dome.

As if this were a fascinating experiment.

Rather than a catastrophe waiting to happen.